Sometimes a comment knocks you back. This week it was the esteemed Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, answering a reporter’s question about why he had not been back to Vermont since the start of the pandemic. 

“I don't really have reliable Internet service or cell phone service…,’’ Leahy told Seven Days. Thank you senator for the truth. 

What? Really???!!! This raises a whole lot of issues!

Why does the senior senator in the entire U.S. not have good Internet or cell phone service to allow him to do the Zoom calls, phone calls, email and texting that are essential for his job? I figured he had a T-2,000 line (That’s a joke) directly from his home to the capitol in D.C.

I have been a fan of Leahy’s for a long time. A prosecutor from Burlington who turned an upset win for the Senate in the Watergate baby class of 1974 into a career for the ages. At various times - chairman of the Judiciary committee, Agriculture committee, Senate President Pro Tempore (third in line to the presidency) and if the Democrats take over the Senate in November, the likely chair of the Senate Appropriations committee. 

The guy doesn’t have reliable Internet? Really? He lives in Middlesex, VT, which is about five miles from Montpelier, the STATE CAPITOL!!!!

If this guy can’t get fast service, no one can. Well, that is actually the case for many of us who live just outside Vermont’s most populated areas. 

My Internet service is really slow and goes out in the middle of business calls all the time. I also live five miles from Montpelier. Comcast fiber stops 500 yards from my door. Consolidated Communications says they can’t sell me faster service, even though I have a land line phone from them. 

We need to face this issue. The failure to deliver high speed Internet and cell phone service in Vermont is a scandal. It is a failure of government leadership, which means us. And it has been going on for years now across every governor and legislature of both parties. Howard Dean, Jim Douglas, Peter Shumlin and Phil Scott all touted the importance of broadband Internet to our rural areas. And yet somehow, Pat Leahy can’t get reliable service.  

As I have said before, the pandemic pulls back the curtain on a society and shows its weaknesses. In Vermont, it has revealed how unprepared we are to become a modern state. 

My phone is ringing with friends who say people are leaving in droves for Maine, Vermont and upstate NY and other areas to escape the cities and the virus.  

This is a massive opportunity for Vermont at so many levels. A pandemic causes an outflow of people from cities to the countryside. Rural areas desperate for new families to populate their schools, pay taxes for government services and bring the innovation capital necessary to modernize our economy. A win-win. 

What do these urban refugees need to make a living? For that matter, what do the people already living here need? Fast Internet and cell service. And we don’t have it five miles northeast of the state capitol, not to mention the hour drive from Brattleboro to White River Junction. Former Gov. Peter Shumlin famously could not do business from his car on the drive from his home in Putney to Montpelier headed up I-91.

What else is essential? The fast-emerging business of tele-health. Eureka. You don’t have to go to the doctor’s office anymore. She can see you on a FaceTime, ZOOM or Skype call. You need a fast connection to make that happen. 

How about education. UVM says students will return to campus this fall. Elementary and high schools are contemplating the same. I doubt it. But whatever happens, the future of education will include online tools.

We need 25,000 new Vermonters of all stripes to create a state where everyone wants to live. Good jobs, great outdoor living, food and arts culture, a new farm/food system community spurred by young farmers and a tech, start-up culture that attracts capital.

Very little of that is possible without fast Internet. An entrepreneur cannot attract seed capital for their business when they can’t download their slide deck to the venture capitalist in Boston. 

And that VC from Boston, whose spouse is demanding they leave the city to raise their kids in a healthy environment, cannot move here if she can’t make a cell phone call in Windsor or East Montpelier, or Hyde Park.

How long will this take? It cannot be this hard? Federal money is pouring into Vermont because of COVID. Surely we can make this happen. 

I’m not saying you need fiber to every home in the Northeast Kingdom. If people want to live off the grid way back in the woods, I don’t think we owe them high speed Internet. They can go to town to a co-working space or coffee shop. There are tradeoffs in life.

There are political leaders and activists working hard to make this happen. Skilled Vermont legislators Tim Briglin and Laura Sibilia are leading the effort to design and fund the effort. And community-based groups are filling the void. But it has taken far too long. 

This issue needs a governor to bang heads in the old LBJ style. Call a meeting of the key players - COMCAST, AT&T, Verizon, VTEL and a few others. Thank them for coming and say this:

“The lack of Internet in the state is an embarrassment and hurts my ability to attract people to live here. It hurts our schools and our health care system and our whole economy. Your companies provide that Internet service. You say it is not profitable to provide it because of our sparse population. Here is my response to you - the Public Service Department works for me. And if I don’t see a major announcement of faster internet deployment in this state in the next six months, that department will launch an investigation of each of you and the profits you have secured from this state in last 25 years. And you will be disqualified from bidding on any state business. Thank you.’’

Believe me, that will get their lobbyists running fast. I realize that this can be complicated. Lots of players involved. But five miles from the state capitol for the senior senator in the entire country? C’mon. It’s embarrassing.